We recently connected with Gwendolyn Squires and have shared our conversation below.

Gwendolyn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Self-publishing is the act of publishing media, especially a creative work of art, as the author or artist, without the use of a publishing house or company. In terms of self-publishing books, I write all of my books and complete the entire publishing process myself. I do most of the editing, designing, and formatting of my books without the aid of a traditional publishing company. I have my own graphic designer who does all of my illustrations.

As a self-publishing author, I have complete creative control and full autonomy over the publishing process. I publish my books at my own expense using the self-publishing platform, Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon’s KDP), maintaining full rights to my books.

The most essential skill for an individual who aspires to become a self-published author is to understand that they will need to oversee the entire book writing and production process, from start to finish, at their own expense.

The first step I took to offer self-publishing services was to make the decision that I wanted to make writing and self-publishing books a business and not just a hobby. It was a massive mindset shift I had to make from writing and self-publishing just my books to assisting others. The only obstacle I faced at the beginning was making room in my publishing budget to hire a phenomenal graphic designer to illustrate and create cover designs.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2010, I retired after a very successful career with Kansas City Public Schools, having served 28 years and spent 19 of those years as a K-8 principal.

A close friend of mine had recently self-published her first book and asked if I was interested in learning how to do the same. Under her guidance, I took my wedding planning notes and self-published my first book in 2004 entitled, The Bridesmaid, The Maid Who Plans Your Wedding. After self-publishing my first book and spending a year learning about the self-publishing business, and developing a business plan, I decided to pursue more.

I had tucked away a box of over 90 journals that I had used during my tenure as a K-8 principal. Many of the journals were kept to document various occurrences of the school day. In 2011, I took a few of the journals and turned them into fictional stories. I quickly decided to create a children’s books series and came up with, The School Day Series. The School Day Series was inspired by my position as a K-8 principal and consists of entertaining, funny, and imaginary stories of events that happened at Seaside Elementary School, placed on the main character, megaphone-carrying, grumpy, and iron-fist Principal Squires. The stories are meant to be humorous, and the illustrations are drawn in bright colors and have a sense of playfulness. To date, I have 23 children’s books in my School Day Series.

In 2015, I was approached by several individuals to assist them in becoming self-published authors. I had self-published numerous books at the time and I enjoyed helping others succeed in doing the same. I soon launched Tea Time Self-Publishing Services where I currently support aspiring authors in producing, publishing, and marketing their passion from pen to paper. I enjoy inspiring individuals who have an interest to become self-aspiring authors.

You only get one chance to self-publish your book(s). The publishing industry, and book marketing, in particular, is a tough business. In order to stand any chance of publishing a successful story, self-help book, or nonfiction title, a new author must think like a traditional publisher.

Publishing companies go through a long process to prepare a book for release. The process and methods are the same for a self-publishing author, except that you have to do everything yourself.

The most important piece of advice I share with my clients is that Amazon is not the only place available to distribute their books. Limiting their books to this one location can cause them to miss out on a huge chunk of the market. I have researched and discovered many other platforms to sell my books and discovered that each platform appealed to a unique set of loyal customers and so that is something I always share. I want potential clients to know that I continue to educate myself about the variety of options available, I have all (23) of my books in various venues all over the United States and will help them to do the same.

I am very detailed and I take the time not only to assist clients in publishing a book but to make them knowledgeable of every step of the process.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I learned early on was that publishing companies go through a long process to prepare a book for release. The process and methods are the same for a self-publishing author, except that you have to do everything yourself. As a new author, I found it easy to self-publish a book. But I quickly ran into self-publishing problems at the onset. I learned that writing and publishing my first (2) books too soon, caused me to miss a few steps in the production process. I quickly realized that I needed to take time to think about the demographics of potential readers and to check competitive titles in my genre in order to find out what readers liked.

Another lesson I learned is that having a mentor in the self-publishing business is like having a guardian angel on my side. Any aspiring owner of self-publishing services can benefit from having a mentor to make their services the best they can be for their clients. A self-publishing mentor–someone who’s gone through the process successfully and, preferably, repeatedly can offer the benefits of his or her experience by giving you advice and pointing you in the right direction. It may even be possible for a mentor to open doors for you through professional contacts.

How’d you meet your business partner?

My graphic designer is my business partner. We met on Linkedin. At the time I was searching for an illustrator for my children’s books. We have been partners since 2010 and he has designed all 23 of my books and has illustrated books for our clients. He has a degree in marketing and is key in keeping us abreast of marketing strategies for our business growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gwendolynsquires.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/gweneg
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gwendolynsquires
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/gwendolyn-squires-phd-579a2625
• Twitter: Gwendolyn Squires @Gweneg

Image Credits
Photo Credits: E. Danielle Photography